Soapbox: Encourage City Council to ban fracking

Rico Moore

When meeting with representatives from Fort Collins city staff's Oil and Gas Advisory Team, the answer to a question I asked regarding Colorado's implementation of Federal Human Health Protection and Environmental Regulations was unknown.

This is not an oversight of staff - I am greatly impressed with the team's excellent work in understanding and encoding the protection of Fort Collins from a fragile and impending oil and gas industry.

I believe that the legislative and regulatory difficulty surrounding oil and gas regulation has, in part, to do with the State Implementation Process, or SIP - strangely reminiscent of our water crisis - which interprets federal legislative acts, distributing power to various state agencies. My questions are:

1. How has Colorado implemented the following federal regulations, from which the oil and gas industry - specifically, the process known as hydraulic fracturing - is exempt: Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; Safe Drinking Water Act; Clean Water Act; Clean Air Act; National Environmental Policy Act; Toxic Release Inventory under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act?

2. Are we aware of the liabilities, dangers and costs created for us all, and specifically, Fort Collins, by exemption from these federal legislative acts?

3. Can we ensure that these exemptions, as they have been interpreted by the state, are re-enacted in Fort Collins's oil and gas regulations and how would this change the nature of our legal defensibility if Gov. John Hickenlooper would decide to sue us for protecting our inalienable rights, under the Colorado Constitution, which states: "That all persons have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; and of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness?"

For easy reference to the oil and gas industry's exemptions from federal legislative acts, which were enacted to protect human and environmental health, please see: "The Oil and Gas Industry's Exclusions and Exemptions to Major Environmental Statutes," prepared by the Oil and Gas Accountability Project.

If we ensure that the integrity of the aforementioned federal legislative acts is re-instated in Fort Collins's charter, our inalienable rights will be upheld.

We will be nearer, I think, to the preservation of our community's integrity and closer to the original intention of the aforementioned federal legislation before it was corruptly augmented.

In conclusion, while rule changes governing oil and gas exploration are occurring at the local, state and federal levels, I strongly urge Fort Collins City Council to ban fracking in Fort Collins and on Fort Collins-owned land.

I also urge residents of Fort Collins to support this effort by contacting their respective City Council member and encouraging her or him to preserve the integrity of Fort Collins.

Rico Moore lives in Fort Collins.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Soapbox: Encourage City Council to ban fracking

When meeting with representatives from Fort Collins city staff's Oil and Gas Advisory Team, the answer to a question I asked regarding Colorado's implementation of Federal Human Health Protection and